Taigan’s bladder was heavy again. She slid down the tree and squatted off to the side. She gritted her teeth and bore down. It felt like pissing blood. She knew from past experience it would be two or three days more before the pain eased and the infection cleared. Until then, blood and fire.

As she pulled up her trousers, she heard a noise nearby. She froze. Though she wore all black, the moons were out. She would be visible. She stepped closer to the tree to blend in with the dappled shadows. She opened herself to Oma, like reaching through a thick, sticky gauze, and recited the song that helped her tether its power just beneath her skin, ready to shape the misty red haze as she saw fit.

A small figure climbed into the clearing. It was one of the children from the camp below. Taigan let out her breath. She released Oma; it was like expelling some syrupy weight.

The girl stopped short. Looked right at Taigan.

Taigan thought to call on Oma again and strike her dead. But her heavy bladder and sour mood made it all feel like too much effort. She raised a finger to her lips, thinking it a universal sign for quiet, but the girl spoke anyhow. Taigan wondered how any of these Dhai survived in the world.

“I saw you in that tree,” the girl whispered.

“You saw shadows,” Taigan said.

“No,” she said.

“Would you like to hear a story about a battle?” Taigan said.

“From very long ago?”

“Yes. Two forces. The Dhai and–”

“Are you a ghost?”

“A… ghost?”

“One of the souls that got free of Sina. Come to haunt us.”

“No. Are you?”

She laughed. “No, of course not.”

“You should go back to your family. There are terrors in these woods.”

“You’re not terrible,” the girl said, “you’re a person.”

The girl’s fearlessness made Taigan breathless. She tried to remember a time when she did not fear people and they did not fear her. Her birth had been strange, and during her formative years, before she began going through the changes, her sexual organs – let alone her sense of herself – never fit into the three neat boxes her people had for them. Unsure of what to call her, they labeled her ataisa, but that never felt right, either. She wondered, looking at this little girl with the orgiastic parents, how different her life would have been if she were raised in Dhai instead of Saiduan. Not Dhai as it used to be, not the Dhai that taught the Saiduan to hunt and kill and enslave, but the Dhai as they became. The Dhai that made this girl and the one Taigan had pushed off a cliff.

“Go home,” Taigan said, and walked away.